Earlier quoted context omitted.
You would reduce it all to atoms.
I’m just trying to take the ideas in this thread seriously. If we are going to argue that it’s bad to try to influence people’s behavior, we ought to think through what that means when applied to entities other than Facebook. That will help us figure out if we really mean what we are saying. Is it an actual value we hold, or only a rhetorical point when we are taking about a few tech companies?
Context and details matter. As does intent. Saying that all discussion is really "influencing", isn't useful, imho.
In the context of our discussion about Facebook, IMHO these are the defining qualities specific to Facebook:
1. Massive, global scale and scope - behavior via Facebook can influence culture, politics, etc.
2. An algorithm driving the bus, as opposed to people (albeit people choose what the algorithm does or doesn't do).
3. Facebook's primary motivation in influencing is to profit via increased user engagement - they currently have no financial incentive to care about the particular nature of said engagement.
4. Facebook's poor track record when it comes to acknowledging critique or concerns around the power its platform has, and Facebook's denial that it should exercise a degree of responsiblity (or be legally held accountable in some way) for said power.
5. The somewhat covert nature of how Facebook functions; as this documentary shows, while how Facebook functions may have been "in the open", it's not something most non-tech folk are aware of, and it's not something Facebook has been, in good faith, forthright and transparent about.
6. The particular power and impact of computers/the internet as a medium of mass communication, which we are still learning about.
6.5 As a subsection of item 6, the viral nature of the internet/social media which means stuff spreads very quickly, unlike other modes or media of human communication.
So sure, a parent "influences" their child, a teacher influences a student, newspapers influence people, and so do Coca-Cola commercials, but not the same way that Facebook has "influence", which I've attempted to describe above.